TRUE
TO FORM

These
trials all have two things in common: 1) They appear, at first, to have all
the elements necessary to convincing a propagandized populace that the enemy
lurks within their midst and must be mercilessly smashed, and 2) In retrospect,
they are always revealed for what they really are: a clumsy attempt to divert
attention away from the failures of the regime. In the case of John Walker
Lindh, the pattern is running all too true to form….

ALLAH
BE PRAISED

Having
failed
to capture or kill Osama, and having let
Mullah Omar speed away in a rickshaw, the administration has settled on
the next best thing: prosecuting the "American Taliban." Indeed,
having an American in the dock may be a whole lot better for those who would
love to imagine (if not actually see) Susan
Sontag, Noam Chomsky,
and Ted Rall behind
bars: it is prosecution by proxy, a subtle way to vilify left-wing "anti-Americanism"
without a reprise of the Palmer
Raids. At a time when almost 60 percent of the American people believe
that high government officials of a Republican hue have
something to hide stemming from the Enron case, can anyone blame Attorney
General John Ashcroft for taking full advantage of what can only be described
as a gift from Allah?

MEDIA
SHARKS IN THE WATER

If
you thought the O.
J. Simpson farce, or the JonBenet
murder case, was a circus, wait until you see the carnival surrounding
the Tali-boy on trial: with little or no action to report on the Afghan front
at the moment, and no "phase two" more exciting than the dispatch
of a relatively small number of US troops to the Philippines, the mainstream
media is looking to the trial of John Walker Lindh to maintain ratings, sell
newspapers, and generate visits to their ill-designed and generally
faltering online editions. Pundits, too, trolling for material, are swooping
down at the sight of the frail, pathetic figure of John Walker Lindh, made
aggressive by the prospect of a fresh kill on which to feast.

Most
but not all of these talking heads are of the conservative persuasion, including
a number of writers
at the Wall Street Journaland National Review, who
blame the Tali-boy's hapless
parents  and, most of all, the liberal milieu of Marin County and
the touchy-feely
faux-spiritual "it's all good" atmosphere that permeates Northern
California. Joe
Farah, of WorldNetDaily, who is no conservative, nevertheless sums up
the complaints of traditionalists who point to the parents as the chief culprits
in what he describes as "a sad commentary on the way Americans raise
their children today." His critique centers not only on the parents,
but on the region and the subculture in which the Tali-boy grew up:

"After
moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, his parents placed him in one
of those 'alternative schools.' There, Walker was known to his peers to
be steeped in the sick culture of rap music. So deep into the world of hip-hop
did Walker plunge that he actually sometimes pretended
to be black himself."

Isn't
it a shame that the "gangsta" rap of "hip-hop" is the
only shred of authenticity
he could find, but, I wonder, can we blame the Tali-boy for that? As for those
dubious "alternative" schools that supposedly poisoned young Walker-Lindh's
mind  isn't home-schooling, a
favored cause of WND, also a form of "alternative" education?
Can anybody really be blamed for seeking an alternative to mind-deadening
and frequently dangerous public schools?

BLAME
IT ON THE QUEERS

None
of this occurs to Farah, apparently, who continues with his little morality
tale:

"In
other words, this kid wanted to be anyone other than who he was. But it gets
worse. About the same time, his father upped and left his family and moved
in with his homosexual lover. If this kid wasn't having an identity crisis
up until then, this may have pushed him over the edge. Next, young Walker,
who stopped using his father's name, by the way, suddenly got an interest
in Islam – probably related to his immersion into the black American Experience."

JONAH'S
GAY PROBLEM

Jonah
Goldberg, who seems have a bug up his  I mean, seems overly concerned
 about the Gay Question (he admits to having a "very thick file
on this subject") has
taken the same tack on this gay angle: Dr. Goldberg's expert diagnosis
is that the kid may have "flipped out" when he discovered his father
was gay. Goldberg, who
once wrote a column that brought up my own sexual orientation in an inappropriate
context, doesn't explain how or why this fits in with the supposedly ultraliberal
milieu in which the Tali-boy was nurtured: if "do your own thing"
ultra-individualism is really such an intrinsic part of Marin County culture,
then why was young Walker-Lindh immune?

The
"he went nuts because his Dad's a faggot" scenario fits in with
Goldberg's prejudices, but not with the facts. Like some nutball anti-Semite
who is forever seeing the Elders
of Zion behind each and every disaster, Goldberg and his ilk see the Elders
of Sodom as the secret masters of an insidious cabal, one whose evil influence
is practically omnipresent.

SULEYMAN'S
REBELLION

Deluded
by the culture of permissiveness, and utterly without values or direction,
John Walker Lindh simply went stark staring mad, and, before he knew it, found
himself in Afghanistan wearing a turban and fighting for the Taliban. There
is a major flaw in this otherwise neat and rather compact explanation for
the bizarre transformation of a privileged American teenager. For if Farah
and his fellow traditionalists would really look at their arguments, and the
trajectory of the Tali-boy's life, they would see that the poor kid shared
their critique of the permissiveness of American culture: indeed, his whole
odyssey can be explained as a rebellion against social liberalism. As
MSNBC put it in a news report:

"Most
teenagers, when they rebel, say they want more freedom. John Walker Lindh
rebelled against freedom. He did not demand to express himself in different
ways. Quite the opposite. He wanted to be told precisely how to dress, to
eat, to think, to pray. He wanted a value system of absolutes, and he was
willing to go to extreme lengths to find it."

HIP
HOP PURITAN

"Often
when someone says something incredibly stupid, the people around them will
respond with remarks such as 'what are you smoking?' and 'are you drunk?,'
illustrating the obvious fact that intoxicated people do not think on the
same level as normal humans. With this in mind, are you then trying to say
that you'd have to be dwelling on a lower level of consciousness [sic] in
order to appreciate Hip-Hop music?"

A
YOUNG REACTIONARY

I
suppose it's just by chance that a 16-year-old Johnny Walker got caught up
in the Koran, instead of the Bible or the writings of the Reverend Sun
Myung Moon, but, in any case, can there be any doubt that, instead of
embracing the liberal values of his parents, the Tali-boy was in full and
open revolt against the permissive society, a young ultraconservative whose
disdain for the "do your own thing" ethos of the sixties is shared
by many of the same people now calling for his blood? What better way to express
his disaffection from the woozy
Marinite "Buddhism" of Marilyn Walker, his mother, than to join
up with a group busily blowing up statues of Buddha?

OUT
OF THE STONE AGE

The
Vanity Fair writer and left-wing war hawk Christopher
Hitchens exulted that the US has "bombed a country out of the Stone
Age," and this triumphalist war-cry sums up the widespread idea that
the "war on terrorism" is a war for modernity. The streamlined
fully-"globalized" free-trading freewheeling world of the future-that-is-now,
where women are "liberated," and sexuality is unleashed in all its
various permutations, has triumphed in Afghanistan, where burkas are being
discarded and the warriors have gone back to sodomizing
young boys. It won't be long before McDonalds
opens, or reopens, in Kabul, and already the marketplaces are bursting
at the seams with the American-made hip-hop
music that supposedly corrupted
the tender young mind of the Tali-boy.

A
YOUNG BILL BENNETT?

Like
many American conservatives, John Walker Lindh is a rebel against modernity.
As he descries the facile hedonism of his fellow hip-hoppers online, he sounds
like a young Bill
Bennett denouncing the moral emptiness of American culture:

"Have
you finally given up on Hip-Hop? Are you ready to move on to heavy metal this
month, or is it back to alternative rock like last month? Please keep rec.music.hip-hop
posted, we all love to hear your remarks and feelings on such subjects as
Foxxy Brown's
[under age] ass, rental cars, and which type of soft drink is the coolest
amoung [sic] those 'real heads' …."

THE
LEGAL BATTLE

The
charges against
the Tali-boy could give him life in prison, and include "engag[ing]
in a conspiracy to kill nationals of the United States while such nationals
were outside the United States," being a member of a designated terrorist
organization, and the relatively niggling count of contributing "material
support" to a terrorist organization (did he give them his allowance?).
Although it is far too early to make any definitive judgment, the preliminaries
already indicate the weakness of the government's case.

TAINTED
EVIDENCE

To
begin with, the whole case could be thrown out of court on the grounds that
the young Taliban warrior wasn't given access to a lawyer. Walker-Lindh's
lawyers are already claiming that the kid asked
for legal representation a few days after his capture, and yet the government
continued interrogating him. Ashcroft's boys, for their part, insist he waived
his rights and they have a signed document to prove it. Yeah, but how did
they get him to sign it? Now, I'm sure we'll be seeing Alan Dershowitz, the
ex-civil
libertarian, a whole lot during the upcoming trial, and perhaps
he would be willing to argue that we had the right
to torture the Tali-boy and to heck with a lawyer. But I don't think any
American judge is going to go for that line of argument, and, if undue pressure
is proven or even implied, there is a real possibility that Ashcroft may not
get his show trial after all.

COULD
BE TROUBLE

There
is, however, a great danger to the Tali-boy and his legal team, and that is
in the footage of him kneeling before Johnny
Michael Spann  the CIA operative killed when captured Al Qaeda fighters
rebelled  and not answering simple inquiries, such as: who are you and
how did you get here? If Walker-Lindh was just a kid on a lark, one who, according
to his father and his lawyers, never made war on America and "loves America,"
then how come he didn't jump for joy at the sight of a fellow American? The
Tali-boy's legal team is bound to argue that, in fighting the Northern Alliance,
their client was not conspiring to kill American nationals. But, if not, then
why did he treat Spann like the enemy?

SACRIFICIAL
LAMB

Even
if the results
of interrogation are ruled inadmissible, this video footage is powerful
evidence that could lead to a conviction  especially if the government
manages to successfully imply or even prove that Walker-Lindh-"Suleyman"
had anything to do with Spann's death, either through an overt act or a failure
to act. Furthermore, if the results of the interrogation aren't thrown out,
and the government establishes that he knew about the September 11 attacks,
knew of bin Laden's responsibility and still decided to stick
with his cause, then the Tali-boy had better kiss his ass good-bye 
because, in that case, he is a perfect sacrificial offering to the War God.

A
STRANGE VENGEANCE

Hapless,
clueless, and thoroughly pathetic, they'll drag him to the altar as the mob
howls and hoots. Like Romans cheering the most exquisite tortures of the arena,
we'll look on the supine and trembling Tali-boy as the knife is plunged into
his youthful flesh and roar with delight at this jolly entertainment, drowning
our sorrow and fear in an orgy of vengeance  not against Osama bin Laden,
who is long gone, and by this time half-forgotten, but against our own. The
trial of John Walker Lindh will be an act of vengeance turned inward: in the
end, for Americans, it's
always all about them.

REALITY
CHECK

Meanwhile,
as the Justice Department mobilizes its apparently limitless resources to
prosecute a deluded nutball who's proved more of a threat to himself than
to anyone else, Ashcroft has issued
yet another security "alert"  as if to remind himself,
as much as us, of the real danger. Having focused the resources of
his department on the Tali-boy, I guess the long-promised
investigation into how US law enforcement and intelligence agencies managed
to miss a conspiracy that was at least five years in the making will have
to be delayed  perhaps indefinitely. Or, at least, until one day, years
from now, when we come upon an item buried in the back pages of the Saturday
paper, reporting that some obscure government commission has just released
a report "proving" that no one was really culpable, and that the
agencies involved need "reform."

ON
KEEPING A STRAIGHT FACE

The
political uses of the Tali-boy's trial are too many and lucrative to be passed
up: Ashcroft and his journalistic
amen-corner are no doubt hoping for a long, drawn-out affair, all the
better to milk this to the max and achieve the chief purpose of any show trial:
to create an atmosphere in which opposition to government policies is de-legitimized
and suspect. Oh, but how can you say that, why we live in a free country,
there's no such thing as censorship here. Uh huh, and if you don't believe
it, just ask Matt Welch,
the (pro-war) "blogger"
who informs us in the online edition of Reason magazine that

"It's
hard to keep a straight face while crying 'censorship' in 21st century America
 with its cheap and widespread Internet access, tiny percentage of state-owned
media, and hundreds of thousands of media jobs  when you've met people
like Cuban baseball historian Severino Nieto. Nieto has written more than
a dozen important works of scholarship since 1959, knowing full well that
none will be published in his lifetime unless Fidel Castro dies first. (El
Jefe doesn't like reminders that there were organized sports before the Revolution.)"

TOO
TOO TRUE!

Of
course, not everyone is Susan Sontag: I'm sure that the Florida professor
being run out of his job, and the high
school teacher fired for his anti-war views, don't have the clout of the
"seven-figure role models" Welch mocks. And certainly Welch doesn't
contest what Sontag says, since it's irrefutable: "It turns out, we have increasingly
become incredibly conformist, and very afraid of debate and criticism." Yes,
and even making a virtue out of it. As Welch would say: "Too true! Pass
the book deal!"

As
for those "hundreds of thousands of media jobs," a good many of
them evaporated in the dot-com meltdown. I suppose that, like Welch and his
fellow "bloggers," they could all set up their own websites: indeed,
it looks to me like most of them
have. Good luck to them  because if they think they can make a living
at it, they'll need all the luck they can get.

I
hasten to add that this is a fact of life of which Welch and and his fellow
bloggers (pro-war and libertarian alike), are all too painfully aware of;
I also hasten to add that I am not bewailing the "tyranny" of the
market, or complaining that antiwar or even cautionary opinions cannot get
a proper hearing on account of the capitalist system. I join with Welch in
celebrating the lack of government-owned media in the US.

SUBSIDIZING
CONSENT

Yet
it would be a mistake to infer, from this, that a party line can't be enforced
just as effectively in a market-driven system. States
depend for their authority on the consent of the governed: this was true
even in totalitarian states such as the old Soviet Union, and demonstrated
beyond doubt in the collapse of that empire: when popular consent was withdrawn,
the whole system came down with amazing rapidity.

The
same is true for our own system, and indeed for all governments everywhere:
their legitimacy is dependent on cheerleading intellectuals who can manage
to be convincing: academics, "public intellectuals," and
journalists who act as a kind of chorus willing to shout "Amen!"
whenever some government official comes out with a policy pronouncement. This
cadre of court intellectuals is amply rewarded with emoluments and various
perks, and certainly the rest of Welch's tale only confirms how this works.
He starts out by telling us how his last five or so articles were rejected
since September 11, and concludes:

"But
what do you know? I was able to find other editors from more prominent, higher-paying
publications who liked my rejected columns just fine. Not only that, I can
also publish anything I want on my Web site, which costs $25 a month to maintain
and has more readers than Cuba has non-government Internet users. It doesn't
quite top Bill Maher's salary and sloe-eyed perks, but at least I don't have
to act like a moral jackass in a comparatively free country."

Yes,
we're free compared to Cuba: but do we really have John Ashcroft to thank
for that? Naturally, post-9/11, the pro-war Welch has found more lucrative
markets to mine: his "Wilsonian" contempt for what
he calls "Consequentialist, Pacifist Chomskyite" views is in
the ascendant, and rising  along with his own career. Next month his
screed pooh-poohing the human casualties of the sanctions on Iraq is scheduled
to appear in Reason, a formerly libertarian magazine now run by someone
who thinks we can have liberty as long as we have the freedom to clone and
drug ourselves to death. (This is a magazine, by the way, which tells us that
Gulf War syndrome is a "myth," Accutane is harmless, and being a
drug company means never having to say you're sorry). The new, "hip"
Gen-X libertarians could care less if the US government rampages halfway around
the world: the only war they want to end is the war on drugs. So much for
"libertarianism" in the post-9/11 world.

Say
what you will about the Tali-boy, at least he aspired to something higher
than $200 sneakers and the "music" of Eminem (another
of the "new" Reason's cultural fixations). As misguided,
bizarre, and even downright evil as his cause turned out to be, John Walker-Lindh
believed in something enough to actually fight for it  unlike
our young laptop bombardiers, who are far too busy making good careers out
of this war to actually pick up a gun.

ANNOUNCEMENT

I
am pleased to announce the publication of Taking
Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in American Foreign Policy
(Second Edition). Edited by John T. Rourke, University of Connecticut 
Storrs, this substantial volume is an anthology of paired articles dealing
with various foreign policy issues. Issue number one is "Should the United
States Resist Global Governance?", with Marc A. Theissen saying "aye"
and Mark Leonard voting "nay": both pieces are from the prestigious
Foreign Affairs magazine. Issue number two asks "Should the United
States Seek Global Hegemony." Robert Kagan says "yes," Charles
William Maynes says "no": both pieces are from the almost-as-prestigious
Foreign Policy magazine. Issue number three is: "Has President
Bush Created a New U.S. Foreign Policy Direction?" Charles Krauthammer
(writing in the Weekly Standard) thinks so, but my answer  in
the only piece in the book that appeared exclusively online  is: I don’t
think so. Other contributors include Colin Powell, Ariel Cohen, Robert Kuttner,
and Bill Clinton. The book is out from McGraw Hill in February: preorder
your copy here.

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